The closest contest in recent history was settled only after recounts and appeals. In 1979 Al Passarell of the NDP defeated Frank Calder of Social Credit 750 to 749, in a two-candidate race in Atlin, which is now the riding of Bulkley Valley-Stikine. Mr. Calder later did not deny the tale that he and his wife had neglected to travel from Victoria to their isolated northern constituency to vote.

If Libs and Greens Ally, ‘It Will Be about Power and Ego,’ Say BC Activists

‘A majority of British Columbians voted for change,’ groups warn.

Activist groups are urging Green Party leader Andrew Weaver to forge a governing deal with the New Democrats — or make any support for the BC Liberals dependent on significant campaign finance and electoral reform, plus a major shift away from energy megaprojects.

Anything less, some activists say, would be a betrayal of the Green Party’s traditional grassroots and set Weaver’s party on the path to political obscurity in the next election.

The activist group Leadnow wants Weaver to work with NDP leader John Horgan to remove big money from elections, move towards a voting system based on proportional representation and halt the Kinder Morgan pipeline and the Site C dam.

“A majority of British Columbians voted for change, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for New Democrats and Greens to come together and work on things they agree on,” said Leadnow executive director Lyndsay Poaps.

Never mind the continuous Clark mumbo-jumbo. And Kevin Falcon what are you waiting for? Horgan begins to come into his own and starts to shine during this period between the election and the final result count.

are building Site C at enormous cost and financial risk with big environmental impact;

want to construct a new 10-lane Massey Bridge over the objections of all but one Metro Vancouver mayor;

are huge LNG fans still pushing for multiple plants;

oppose $10 a day universal child care;

would demand another plebiscite on new Metro Vancouver transit funding, against the wishes of most mayors;

haven’t increased income assistance for 11 years and only raised disability benefits by a small amount after freezing them for nine years, then clawed back transit passes for many;

froze the carbon tax Weaver helped implement.

But the differences don’t end there — the Greens have been scathing in their criticism of the BC Liberals, especially on climate change issues:

“Under Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberal government, B.C. has moved backwards. Of Canada’s four most populous provinces, only B.C. is projected to increase its emissions by 2030,” says the BC Greens election platform.

“The Clark government has frozen the price of carbon, ignored the recommendations of their own Climate Leadership Team and left the clean tech sector out to dry with no support. They have invested heavily in LNG and approved oil pipelines, hinging B.C.’s economic future on the sunset industry of fossil fuels,” it concludes.

And Weaver himself ripped the Clark government in 2015 in the BC Legislature over its liquefied natural gas obsession and its failure to deliver:

“Frankly, the incompetence of our government’s bumbling attempts to land LNG final investment decisions have made the British Columbia government a laughing stock on the international energy scene,” Weaver said. “The lack of a fiscally conservative approach to energy policy in this province makes me wonder just what this government is thinking. They are chasing a falling stock and doubling down in the process.”

And then Weaver went on to pummel the BC Liberals for pushing ahead with BC Hydro’s Site C dam, which Clark promised in 2016 to push “past the point of no return.”

“Site C is fiscally foolish, socially irresponsible and environmentally unsound. It no longer represents a wise economic social environmental option for providing British Columbians with the power they need,” Weaver also told the BC Legislature. “There are other alternatives available at cheaper costs with lower environmental and social impacts.”

“I’ve been pointing out for several years now that Site C is the wrong project at the wrong time when alternative energy, including geothermal, wind, tidal and small-scale hydro sources, coupled with existing dams would provide substantially improved firm energy and capacity,” Weaver said.

“This approach would be less damaging to the environment and distributed around British Columbia. It would provide future power requirements with better costs and employment opportunities. Geothermal, wind, tidal and smaller hydro projects would deal substantial economic benefit to communities, especially First Nations,” the Green leader concluded.

Agree or disagree, it’s pretty hard to imagine Weaver and his Green MLAs being able to defend keeping Christy Clark in power so she can complete Site C and develop LNG plants — these quotes would come back to haunt them forever.

It looks very much like the decision on which party will govern will indeed rest with Weaver and new Green MLAs Adam Olsen and Sonia Furstenau.

UBC’s Milligan ran computer simulations to assess the possible impact of absentee ballots and recounts an amazing one million times and came to the conclusion that a minority is very likely.

“And what I found was about 60 per cent of the time, things just stay kind of like what they are, 43 seats for the Liberals, 41 for the NDP,” said Milligan. “But a substantial 25 per cent of the time, it turns out to be a tie, it would be 42-42.”

And Milligan says there is a very slim chance — less than five per cent — the NDP could pull off an upset and grab two extra seats, while the BC Liberals have a tiny chance at adding two seats. He also figures that absentee ballots tend to favour the NDP, not the BC Liberals.

“I learned two things... The NDP get more of a boost from the absentee ballots than the Liberals do. And the second thing is the size of these boosts... can move the per cent vote up or down by about a half percentage point,” Milligan told CKNW radio.

“[There are] a couple possible reasons for that. Parties might have more aggressive get out the vote campaigns, but more likely to me is it’s the type of people who use this absentee thing might be quite different and might tend to favour, for whatever reason, the NDP,” Milligan said.

That isn’t the only factor working against Clark. One of her former key staff members has joined former Liberal finance minister Kevin Falcon in criticizing the BC Liberals’ campaign tactics.

Clark’s former press secretary Chris Olsen says the BC Liberal team led by campaign director Laura Miller committed a “crucial error” by wrongly accusing a woman who confronted Clark during a North Vancouver campaign stop of being an “NDP plant.”

Retired social work assistant Linda Higgins shook hands with Clark in a grocery store, but then said to her “I would never vote for you because of what...” Clark rudely cut her off without letting her give her reasons, which Higgins later said were housing affordability and the wrongful firing of eight health care researchers, one of whom took his life.

The BC Liberal campaign, including Miller on Twitter, attacked Higgins, only retracting days later, without apologizing for the false accusation. The incident sparked an #IamLinda Twitter hashtag and outraged comments.

“The Liberal campaign should have apologized as quickly as possible,” Olsen, a former CKNW and CTV reporter who was Clark’s press secretary from 2011 to 2012, told the Province’s Mike Smyth. “But they made it worse instead and it may have cost them a majority government.”

Olsen also observed that BC Liberal cabinet minister Naomi Yamamoto — who was present for the encounter — lost her North Vancouver-Lonsdale seat to NDP candidate Bowinn Ma.

Olsen’s comments followed Falcon’s surprisingly quick condemnation not only of Clark’s campaign but also her approach to transit issues in Metro Vancouver and her ongoing support for corporate political donations, which overwhelmingly go to the BC Liberals.

“For the BC Liberals, they really got hammered particularly in the Lower Mainland, and I think that reflects frustration over a number of issues, campaign finance, lack of progress over transportation projects, and just a little too much politics and not quite enough policy initiative,” Falcon, who finished second to Clark in the BC Liberal leadership contest in 2011, told the Vancouver Sun’s Rob Shaw last week.

“I think the public recognized that B.C.’s economy is the envy of the nation, I just don’t think it was enough,” Falcon said.

“I think the perceived ethical issues, the campaign finance issues that were never really addressed, I think that really gnawed away at people, and it bothered them and that was reflected in a negative vote,” he concluded, adding that reforming political donation rules “should have been done a long time ago.”

Given the BC Liberals’ complete condemnation of the Greens’ core issues and a potential internal rebellion against the premier’s continued leadership, could Green MLAs Weaver, Olsen and Furstenau really go into the BC Legislature and guarantee Christy Clark stays on as premier?

Because the leopard can no more change its spots than Clark’s BC Liberals can become environmentalist social democrats.

Green voters in this election included those who support Green ideals and those who previously voted BC Liberal, but urgently wanted to get rid of Clark as premier.

None of those voters could possibly be satisfied with the Greens propping up Clark, even with a weak co-operation agreement that would deliver little. And given an unstable government, the odds of an election within 18 months are huge — and those voters would seriously punish the Greens.

If Weaver listens to his mother’s good advice, he won’t trust Clark’s phony smile or any desperate promises she makes to retain power, and an NDP-Green agreement will guarantee real progressive change.

If the Greens continue to gain support, which they may well do in future elections, which party stands to lose the most?

Greens mull options ahead of final B.C. election results

The deputy leader of B.C.'s Greens says the party is planning a series of moves that could shake the direction of the province following last week's inconclusive election results.

Matt Toner says the fact that the Greens hold three seats and potentially the balance of power in the legislature has party leader Andrew Weaver calculating possible agreements with the Liberals and New Democrats.

Here is a good article about how the BC Liberals actually stole the election. They gerrymandered the ridings before giving the job over to an "independent" body.

The "independent" body also did things like try to ensure that Courtenay remained a Liberal seat by hiving off Cumberland, Union Bay and Hornby and Denman Islands. Instead of a 9 vote lead the NDP would be leading by more than a thousand votes if the boundaries from last time had remained in place.

When the government launched the process to review the constituency boundaries in 2013, it stipulated there could be no reduction in the number of seats in three areas: the North, the Cariboo-Thompson, and Columbia-Kootenay.

In total, 17 constituencies in those regions were “protected” or “frozen,” even though they are relatively sparsely populated.

Under B.C. law, constituencies are supposed to have similar populations to ensure equal representation. Other than in “special circumstances,” the law requires constituencies to be within 25 per cent of the provincial average. The government allowed constituencies in the three regions to have smaller populations.

In last week’s vote, the BC Liberals won in the majority of those smaller constituencies that they had protected, McMartin pointed out. “Of the 17 electoral districts with below-average populations, the BC Liberals won 13 — or three of every four,” he wrote, noting that each of those ridings had an average of 14,475 votes cast.

That was much better than the party fared in the province’s other 70 regular-sized constituencies. In those, where an average of 22,190 people voted, the BC Liberals won just 30 out of 70, or about two out of every five.

What could well be coming to a province called BC. Clark will delay recalling Ledge as long as possible, then eventually govern with Green support, and then try to call a snap election. Spector now as part of the Green camp says everything one needs to know about Andrew Weaver.

It's weird that Passarell ALSO became a Socred. I could kind of understand it in Calder's case(it was the best way he could get payback on Dave Barrett for dumping him from cabinet), but does anybody know why Passarell crossed the floor?

What could well be coming to a province called BC. Clark will delay recalling Ledge as long as possible, then eventually govern with Green support, and then try to call a snap election. Spector now as part of the Green camp says everything one needs to know about Andrew Weaver.

She'd probably try to call it within eighteen months, so nobody in Oak Bay-Gordon Head could start a recall campaign against Weaver.

It's weird that Passarell ALSO became a Socred. I could kind of understand it in Calder's case(it was the best way he could get payback on Dave Barrett for dumping him from cabinet), but does anybody know why Passarell crossed the floor?